Geert Wilders, the veteran anti-Islam firebrand, has won a convincing victory in the Dutch general election after one of the country’s most close-fought campaigns for many years.

Exit polls showed the leader of the Freedom Party (PVV), who has called for a ban on mosques, the Koran and Islamic schools, well ahead of his two rivals in what had been expected to be a knife-edge three way race.

Mr Wilders was predicted to win 35 seats, up 18 from the last elections in 2021, according to preliminary results. Final polls before Wednesday’s vote had put him on course to secure 28 seats.

“The largest party in the Netherlands, and I tell you, the voter has spoken. We are sick of it and we are going to ensure that the Dutchman comes first again,” the 60-year-old political veteran said amid cheers from his surprised and overjoyed supporters.

“We can’t be ignored,” he added, as he railed against the “asylum tsunami” and called on other parties to join him in coalition.

The triumph came a day after polling by state broadcaster NOS put him in the lead by a single seat and within touching distance of the government for the first time in a political career that stretches back to 1998.

Mr Wilders, whose anti-migrant manifesto calls for a referendum on Dutch membership of the EU, turned his late surge into victory as the Netherlands sought to choose its first new prime minister in 13 years.

But the divisive populist faces a difficult and uncertain path to replace Mark Rutte, the longest serving prime minister in Dutch history who is now favourite to be the next Nato secretary general.

Establishment parties will be wary of entering into coalition with a man who has called on the Netherlands to retract recent apologies for the slave trade, end weapons shipments to Ukraine, launch a Nexit referendum on leaving the EU and commit to “zero asylum seekers”.

In the Nieuwspoort, the press centre of the Dutch parliament in the Hague, where journalists, party officials and MPs gather, there were audible gasps at the moment it was predicted the hard-Right would win a Dutch election for the first time.

Dilan Yesilgöz, Mr Rutte’s successor as People’s Party (VVD) leader and his hardline former justice minister, had appeared to be in pole position to put together a coalition government and become the first female prime minister in Dutch history in the run up to Wednesday’s vote.

The Turkish-born former refugee, 46, had led the polls before losing ground to Mr Wilders, after a campaign in which she vowed to crack down on migration and limit family reunification for asylum seekers.

Ms Yesilgöz said the results were disappointing and there were “major lessons” to be learnt by politicians.

“The people have not been listened to enough,” she said.

Immigration is at its highest for 20 years in the Netherlands, with 403,100 arrivals this year in a country of 17.5million people at a time when Europe has faced a summer of rising migrant numbers.

But on a disappointing night for the formerly dominant party in Dutch politics, she was predicted to take just 24 seats, 10 fewer than in 2021; making the VVD the third largest party.

Frans Timmermans, the ex-EU climate chief and leader of the Groenlinks-PvdA alliance of Left-wing and green parties, was on course to win 25 seats.

He had warned he was the only hope to prevent a Right-wing coalition. He will now fancy his chances of forming a coalition if the divisive Mr Wilders cannot cobble together a ruling alliance.

In the highly fractured world of Dutch politics, parties must reach 76 seats to form a majority from a ballot paper of 29 different parties, with none of them predicted to get more than 20 per cent of the vote.

Ms Yesilgöz, dubbed a “pitbull in high heels” for her uncompromising attitude, was counting on the support of other Right-wing parties to form a conservative alliance. But Mr Wilders will now have the first attempt to woo them into government.

The daughter of a Kurdish human rights activist, who arrived in the Netherlands when she was eight, the VVD leader has not ruled out a coalition with Mr Wilders, as Mr Rutte did at the last election.

But she has said she would not join a government with the shock-haired populist as prime minister.

Mr Wilders, who is accompanied everywhere by bodyguards after years of fierce criticism of Islam, has softened his rhetoric in a campaign dominated by migration, the cost of living and a housing crisis.

In the final televised debate of party leaders on the eve of Wednesday’s vote, Mr Wilders said he wanted to be prime minister “of all Dutch people”.

“Whatever your faith, your background, whatever that is, regardless of your religion or origin,” he said.

‘It would be very controversial’

Among the Hague’s Muslim community, there was defiance as voters headed to polling stations that included the Anne Frank and Van Gogh museums in Amsterdam, pubs, train stations and even a petting zoo.

One voter, Liakiym Celik, said his father moved to the Netherlands from Turkey. He admitted Mr Wilders’ calls to close the mosques was “worrying” but other parties would stop him from carrying out the pledge.

“It would not happen. It would be very controversial because there’s no country in the Western world that has this law,” the 21-year-old said.

“No, I am not afraid,” said Malk, a 19-year-old Muslim student, who preferred not to give her surname.

“The Netherlands is a country where there are human rights. I don’t think he can do whatever he wants, even if he wins.”

Andre Krouwel, who teaches political science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, said that despite the rest of the world thinking the Netherlands was “a crazy place” like Amsterdam, “Dutch people are Right-wing socially, economically, socially.”